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Rustic Retreat on Gitche Gumee

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: August 13, 2000

Correction Appended

LAST September, on a family trip to Longfellow's ''shining Big-Sea-Water'' -- Lake Superior in Minnesota -- we hiked, bicycled, canoed, sailed, visited historic sites and gobbled lake trout and heavenly homemade doughnuts. We even swam in the icy water.

What made a fine adventure extraordinary was our stay at Naniboujou Lodge. Founded as a private club for the likes of Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Ring Lardner, the rustic 71-year-old building of shingles and glass is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is on scenic Highway 61, memorialized in the Dylan song.

We were intrigued, but were sure Naniboujou was out of our price range. The first of many pleasant surprises was that rooms are $70 to $90 a night. We ended up doing even better with a special deal for families. For $110, we got two cozy, interconnected rooms, each with a small, shower-equipped bathroom (more expensive rooms have larger baths with tubs) and knotty pine furnishings. We would have been happier with a view of the lake, but for a family accustomed to rough-and-tumble housekeeping cottages, we reveled in the fact that our beds were made and rooms thoroughly cleaned each morning.

We arrived on a Sunday evening and after we had finished our first fine meal of lake trout in the vast dining room, our waitress told us the almost full moon would rise around 10.

By the time our sons, Roy, 11, and Guy, 9, were asleep, the moon had changed from a dangling pumpkin to an impossibly large sheer white orb. My wife, Suzanne, and I stood on the shore for a moment, entranced by the broad band of light that paved the rippling ''Kitchi-Gami'' -- the original Indian term for the greatest lake (Longfellow called it ''Gitche Gumee.''). I remembered that Guy had pronounced at dinner: ''The fun's just starting.''

In fact the fun here started a long time ago, though not in the manner intended.

Naniboujou was born in the twilight of the Jazz Age, when nobody imagined that the stock market would soon crash, killing the immense and crazy dreams of a crazy decade. Indeed, for the rich group who banded together in the late 1920's to form an exclusive club of 1,000 men of affluence and achievement on the rocky shores of Lake Superior, the party was just beginning.

A scrapbook of articles and newspaper clippings in the lobby told us of the big plans to turn a virgin forest into a golf course, a dozen tennis courts, a marina for yachts and a clubhouse built from native stone. Celebrities lent their names in return for free membership. Lardner even promised to recommend the club to friends ''as soon as I find out how to pronounce it.''

The name itself reflected grandiose, if quixotic aspiration. The lakeside retreat was called Naniboujou after the Cree Indian god of the outdoors who ruled the Lake Superior area. Naniboujou fueled great myths: it was he who invented the raspberry and made the blueberry grow in marshy places, not to mention chasing the devil from the North Shore.

So when Naniboujou opened on July 7, 1929, with fireworks, flappers and its very own fable, promoters were already moving on to the next thing -- adding 5,000 acres and a hunting lodge near the Canadian border to the resort's original 3,330. But just four months later came Black Friday, members stopped paying dues, and by the next summer nobody was coming. Only the clubhouse -- today's hotel -- was built. By all rights, Naniboujou should have died then and there.

The club idea did. By 1932, the lodge was open to any paying guest. Then came a succession of uses and owners; it was closed during World War II. Then a family named Wallace owned it for nearly two decades, transforming it into a hotel for families. In 1985, a young couple bought it, determined to carry on the new tradition.

Tim and Nancy Ramey, like the Wallaces, were part of an evangelical Christian organization. They strained mightily to come up with the purchase price, relying on prayer and friends' money. In one sense, they bought far less than the original resort: the more than 3,000 acres across the street had long ago become a magnificent state park with a spectacular waterfall.

Today, just nine acres belong to the resort. But it seems much bigger. There is a quarter mile of beach frontage and a wide lawn with chairs for relaxing. Birch, pine and maple trees rustle in the lake breeze.

Inside, the heart of the resort -- the Great Hall, which is used as the dining room -- is covered in colorful zigzagging designs in a psychedelic marriage of Art Deco and traditional Cree Indian patterns, the original paint from 1929. At one end stands a 20-foot-high fireplace made with 200 tons of rounded Lake Superior rocks. The ceiling is arched to represent the bottom of a canoe.

The Rameys updated the building little by little, adding wood-burning fireplaces in 5 of the 24 rooms, a solarium and a new heating system. They also set policies intended to take guests back to a gentler time: there are no televisions. There is only one VCR, in the solarium, and it is for guests to watch family-type movies or a home video of a really bad storm in 1996. Alcohol, which must be supplied by the guests themselves, is permitted only in guests' rooms. (Ice will be delivered upon request.) Nancy says the couple makes no attempt to evangelize, focusing instead on creating an environment where people ''can slow down and enjoy each other.''